I am pretty excited about learning django. As part of the development process, I wanted to see what it takes to host a django app and thought it would be a good exercise to try it out on my domain. In order to do this, you need shell access. A very important point to make is that the steps below have been edited slightly. I changed the location and my username to be /home/username. You have to replace this to whatever is your location and username on bluehost.

Here are the steps I took to first install Python. The reason I am doing this is so I may have multiple versions of python.

[~]# mkdir python  
[~]# cd python  
[~/python]# mkdir src  
[~/python]# cd src  
[~/python/src]# wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.3/Python-2.7.3.tgz  
[~/python/src]# tar xvfz Python-2.7.3.tgz  
[~/python/src]# cd Python-2.7.3  
[~/python/src/Python-2.7.3]# mkdir ~/python/python27  
[~/python/src/Python-2.7.3]# ./configure -prefix=/home/username/python/python27  
[~/python/src/Python-2.7.3]# make  
[~/python/src/Python-2.7.3]# make install  
[~/python/src/Python-2.7.3]# cd ..

Now add the new python bin to your path by adding the following line to your .bashrc file

export PATH=$HOME/python/python27/bin:$PATH

Source the .bashrc file and use the which command to confirm the location of python

[~/python/src]# source ~/.bashrc  
[~/python/src]# which python  
/home/username/python/python27/bin/python

Now install pip to make life easy. The prerequisite is to install setuptools first.

[~/python/src]# wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/s/setuptools/setuptools-0.6c11.tar.gz  
[~/python/src]# tar xvfz setuptools-0.6c11.tar.gz  
[~/python/src]# cd setuptools-0.6c11  
[~/python/src/setuptools-0.6c11]# python setup.py install  
[~/python/src/setuptools-0.6c11]# cd ..  
[~/python/src]# wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/p/pip/pip-1.1.tar.gz  
[~/python/src]# tar xvfz pip-1.1.tar.gz  
[~/python/src]# cd pip-1.1  
[~/python/src/pip-1.1]# python setup.py install  
[~/python/src/pip-1.1]# cd

Using virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper makes development on multiple projects so much better. I wont go into details here on why this is good.. but trust me on this! Here are the instructions on installing them -

[~]# pip install virtualenv  
[~]# pip install virtualenvwrapper

Create a directory to keep all your virtual environments -

[~]# mkdir .virtualenvs

Now add virtualenvwrapper.sh script to your .bashrc files to add the virtualenvwrapper functions to your environment. Add the following line to your .bashrc. Don’t forget the dot in front of the path.

. /home/username/python/python27/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

Source the .bashrc file to activate the functions. Then go ahead and create your virtualenv. I am gonna call mine mydjango.

[~]# source .bashrc  
[~]# mkvirtualenv mydjango

Running the which command will tell you which python you are using. Your prompt will also change to show the virtualenv you are using.

(mydjango) [~]# which python  
/home/username/.virtualenvs/mydjango/bin/python

Now go ahead install all the packages needed for Django while you are in your virtualenv.

(mydjango) [~]# pip install Django  
(mydjango) [~]# pip install MySQL-python  
(mydjango) [~]# pip install flup

Now that all requirements are done, we can start our django project. Lets start with creating a location where all your projects will live. I chose to put this under django_projects in my home directory. I then go in that directory and start a new project and call it myproject.

(mydjango) [~]# mkdir django_projects  
(mydjango) [~]# cd django_projects  
(mydjango) [~/django_projects]# django-admin.py startproject myproject

I now create a directory in my public_html folder. This is so that the project is visible using the url http://www.mydomain.com/myproject

(mydjango) [~/django_projects]# mkdir ~/public_html/myproject  
(mydjango) [~/django_projects]# cd ~/public_html/myproject

Now we will create an fcgi file in your public folder. Lets call it mysite.fcgi. This is to redirect and execute your project. Make note of the first line.. We need to point the script to the python in the virtualenv we created earlier. We will also add the project and virtualenv python instance to the python path..

#!/home/username/.virtualenvs/mydjango/bin/python  
import sys, os

# Add a custom Python path.  
sys.path.insert(0, "/home/username/.virtualenvs/mydjango")  
sys.path.insert(13, "/home/username/django_projects/myproject")  
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'myproject.settings'  
from django.core.servers.fastcgi import runfastcgi  
runfastcgi(method="threaded", daemonize="false")

Another point which I initially missed was when I created the file mysite.fcgi. When setting the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE, make sure it is set to the name of your project. In this example, I put it as the same name as my django project + .settings which is myproject.settings.

Make sure to set the permissions on the file

(mydjango) [~/public_html/myproject]# chmod 755 mysite.fcgi

Now create a .htaccess file in the same place -

AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi  
RewriteEngine On  
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f  
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ mysite.fcgi/$1 [QSA,L]

Now turn off your virtualenv with the deactivate command.

(mydjango) [~/public_html/myproject]# cd  
(mydjango) [~]# deactivate  
[~]#

Now if you go to http://www.yourdomain.com/myproject/ you should see your standard Django-powered page.

Here are the sources I used to get this to work. Thanks for all the help!

http://simplyargh.blogspot.com/2012/04/python-27-django-14-on-bluehost.html
 http://alextreppass.co.uk/getting-django-working-on-bluehost

http://blog.ruedaminute.com/2011/01/2011-installation-instructions-for-django-on-bluehost/